European Union ministers on Tuesday approved a plan for individual countries in the bloc to accept a share of the hundreds of thousands of refugees seeking asylum on the continent — but only after overruling four former Soviet bloc countries. The home affairs and interior ministers, meeting in an emergency session here, voted on a plan to apportion 120,000 refugees — still only a small fraction of those flowing into Europe — among members of the European Union.

The dissenters were the ministers representing the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. Under European law, three of the countries — the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia — would be required to accept migrants against their will, said one European Union diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity shortly after the vote.

The idea behind the plan is to relieve the pressure on front-line nations like Italy and Greece, which migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan and African have been flooding.

France and Germany back a compulsory approach to resettling refugees. But a call for the members to share the burden of absorbing the migrants according to the wealth and population of the member countries met with fierce resistance. The squabbling has highlighted the lack of a united European response to one of the worst humanitarian crises in decades.

Oh I get it. The new leftist line is we need the workers to feed the social security ponzy scheme. The SS system was broken by the drunk spending politicians instead of being in a trust fund like it should have been. Who are the people of what we keep hearing, "Brussels" who seem to be the masters of Europe and now are being followed by Obama and his gang? Who are these people that are the new form of tyranny who are ruling over us behind the scenes?

Here is one theory about Merkel. Someone yesterday called in to Michael Savage. She was from Southern Germany and unfortunately I didn't get to here the whole conservation but she said she wonders if Merkel who is from the former East Germany has lived and raised from the Communist mindset has something to do with it. She was suspicious that she is part of something behind the scenes. I suspect it is just part of this whole progressive movement.

One article suggests Merkel is being practical. To get more workers in to Germany to support the generous welfare retirement state:

****Immigrants: Why Merkel Opened Up The Flood Gates

By Mauldin Economics • on September 20, 2015 • in Politics

impose quotas under pain of sanctions, Brussels has unwisely brought home the reality that states have given up sovereignty over their borders, police and judicial systems, just as they gave up economic sovereignty by joining the euro.

This comes as a rude shock, creating a new East-West rift within European affairs to match the North-South battles over EMU. With certain nuances, the peoples of Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and the Baltic states do not accept the legitimacy of the demands being made upon them.

But it is the countries of Eastern Europe that are bearing the brunt of the immigration crisis. This map from the New York Times depicts the general flow of immigrants from Turkey into Germany. It was not all that long ago that one could pass freely from one country in the EU to another, but now border walls and controls are being erected.

And while Merkel says Germany can take 800,000 immigrants, notice that they are instituting border controls to stem the flow. It’s is all well and good to say you can absorb nearly a million immigrants, but where you going to put them? How will you feed them or school them? That effort takes planning and time, planning and time that have not been much in evidence the past few years in Europe.

Just as the Grexit crisis showed us the underbelly of European monetary integration, the refugee crisis highlights the huge difficulty of political integration. Hungarians, Slovaks, and Czechs do not want Brussels telling them how many Syrians they must admit and support. I don’t blame them.

Ambrose astutely points out that Europe must now deal with an east-west split on immigration along with the still-unbridged north-south economic chasm. Yet EU leaders push blithely on, thinking they can roll right over their opposition. To them each crisis presents another opportunity to impose structure and an artificial unity from the top down.

This is maddening, and it leaves an interesting question unanswered. Why is Germany so willing to accept so many migrants, while other countries are not? Aside from the 800,000 it will take this year, officials have said Germany can handle 500,000 more per year, indefinitely.

That starts to add up in a few years, even in a country of 80+ million. This is more than a gesture. What is Merkel thinking?

The answer is that Merkel is thinking ahead. Germany’s economy is going to need those people. Germany currently has a population of 82 million, but that number is expected to fall by 12 million over the next 40 years. Further, as the population ages, the number of potential workers who are not retired will be reduced by many more millions. The percentage of people in Germany of working age (between 20 and 65) was projected by a recent study to drop from 61% to 54% by 2030. Germany recorded the lowest birth rate in the world from 2008 to 2013. Hold that thought. (Mitchell)

Merkel’s immigration plan presents huge problems, given Germany’s generous retirement benefits and social programs. For every baby boomer that stops working, the country needs at least one person to start working. The US is in better shape only because we have enough legal immigrants to keep the demographic pipeline flowing. Even so, we will hit the wall at some point unless more and more potential retirees keep working.

Germany is in much deeper trouble on this point, and Merkel knows it. I suspect she wants to bring in quite a few million immigrants, somehow make good Germans out of them, and keep the economy humming.

My good friend Dennis Gartman wrote about this in his September 15 daily report:

But there is a very real demographic reason why Germany is so willing to take a surfeit of these refugees: German’s demographics demand it. Simply put, Germany’s population… and especially its indigenous… population is imploding swiftly and certainly.

Already there are very real shortages of young, skilled workers, and many German companies openly and regularly complain that they cannot hire enough workers to fill job vacancies because there are not enough workers available for those jobs.

Further, Germany needs younger workers to fill those jobs because it needs their salaries for the social welfare programs that Germany is so renowned for. Simply put, there are not enough workers paying into the social programs to pay for them at present, and this problem shall become worse, not better, unless Germany’s population swells measurably in the coming years and decades.

So, Ms. Merkel has a clear ulterior motive for her seeming generosity: she wants the present welfare system in Germany that benefits now and will even more greatly benefit more in the future her normal constituency. If Germans are going to retire they shall need either newly born Germans to take their place and pay into the social security systems or Germany shall need to “import” foreign workers. For now, it is the latter that Ms. Merkel is embracing.

Immigrants – Newfound Sympathy

Before going any further, let’s define some terms. Refugees are persons driven from their homes by war, natural disasters, or other circumstances beyond their control. They have little or no choice but to seek refuge elsewhere.

Migrants, in contrast, are people who have homes but choose to move elsewhere, typically for economic reasons. They think they can increase their income or improve their lives in a new country.

This distinction is important in international law. Various treaties and agreements obligate governments to give refugees at least temporary shelter. Migrants, because they have a home to which they could return, receive lower priority.

One of the problems is that Europe’s incoming masses include both refugees and migrants. Sorting them out is not always easy. Many lack passports and other identifying documents. I saw a small note in the Wall Street Journal this week saying that Sweden is paying a language-analysis firm to verify refugee candidates’ origins by their accents. As good a method as any, I suppose.

I think everyone agrees that sheltering genuine refugees is simply the right thing to do. We all know that in other circumstances we could be the homeless ones. Some older Europeans saw World War II uproot millions. Their children and grandchildren have heard the stories, and that awareness probably drives some of the sympathy we see now.

While the goals are laudable, there are limits. Even a continent as large as Europe needs to manage population inflows and screen out undesirables. The sheer scale of the challenge is mindboggling. More than four million people have left Syria alone. Tens of thousands more are leaving each week. Most are still in the bordering states of Turkey and Jordan, which have their own challenges and can’t offer permanent resettlement.

This graphic from Stratfor shows where people are leaving and where they want to go.Merkel immigrantsimmigrantsYou can see that part of the problem is intra-European. People from Kosovo, Montenegro, and Albania want to leave their countries. While some of them might be able to legitimately claim refugee status, I think most can be properly labeled as economic immigrants.

It’s also interesting which countries have received the most asylum applicants

Military Science Fiction by the Author of A Desert Called Peace and A State of Disobedience. A Frighteningly Possible Novel of the Next Century, Where Europe is an Islamic Stronghold and the Staging Ground for the Final Jihad Against the Great Satan: America. First Time in Paperback.

“Slavery is a part of Islam . . . Slavery is part of jihad, and jihad will remain as long there is Islam.” —Sheikh Saleh Al-Fawzan, author of the religious textbook At-Tawhid (“Monotheism”) and senior Saudi cleric. Demography is destiny. In the 22nd century European deathbed demographics have turned the continent over to the more fertile Moslems. Atheism in Europe has been exterminated. Homosexuals are hanged, stoned or crucified. Such Christians as remain are relegated to dhimmitude, a form of second class citizenship. They are denied arms, denied civil rights, denied a voice, and specially taxed via the Koranic yizya. Their sons are taken as conscripted soldiers while their daughters are subject to the depredations of the continent’s new masters. In that world, Petra, a German girl sold into prostitution as a slave at the age of nine to pay her family’s yizya, dreams of escape. Unlike most girls of the day, Petra can read. And in her only real possession, her grandmother’s diary, a diary detailing the fall of European civilization, Petra has learned of a magic place across the sea: America. But it will take more than magic to free Petra and Europe from their bonds; it will take guns, superior technology, and a reborn spirit of freedom.

With the French and many others around the world still in shock after the terrorist attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, French President Francois Hollande said Monday in a speech before the two chambers of Parliament that France is at war and announced a series of policies to fight terrorism. The attacks revealed the extent to which the situation in Syria, the immigration crisis in Europe and international terrorism are interconnected. The repercussions of the attacks will be similarly far-reaching.

The Paris attacks will seriously challenge the continuity of the Schengen Agreement, which eliminated border controls in Europe. As of Monday, the Schengen Agreement is effectively suspended in many places. France has re-established border controls, as have Sweden, Germany and Slovenia. Hungary built a fence to protect its border with Serbia, which is not a member of the treaty. So far, these actions are taking place within the framework of Schengen, which allows for the temporary reintroduction of border controls during emergencies.

What is a Geopolitical Diary?

The big question is whether Schengen will be formally abolished, or if countries will begin to opt out from it. The concept of a Europe without borders has become very difficult for governments to defend. As a first reaction, European governments could enact measures to improve intelligence sharing and increase cooperation between security forces in Europe while trying to preserve the agreement. But the future of Schengen is ultimately in the hands of European voters. If the popular sentiment turns against Schengen, moderate governments — or, after the next electoral cycle, nationalist governments — could withdraw from the agreement.

Meanwhile, closing off Europe's external borders without finding a home for the migrants could lead to serious problems in the Balkans, where migrants will be stranded. As several thousand men and women become involuntary immigrants to countries with high unemployment and latent ethnic tensions, the region's already fragile political and social structures will experience significant strain in the next few months.

The Paris attacks could accelerate the rise of nationalist parties across Europe. After the dust settles in France, voters could decide that Hollande's Socialist government has failed to protect them. In the upcoming municipal elections (scheduled for December), the center-right Republicans and the far-right National Front will probably have strong showings, paving the way for a strong performance for both parties in the presidential election of 2017. To different degrees, the two parties criticize Europe's policies on migration and, in the case of the National Front, France's membership in the eurozone.

The rise in Euroskepticism will be felt elsewhere in Europe. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has already changed policy to toughen regulations on asylum. In the coming days she will be under pressure from conservative forces to follow the policy changes with political changes, potentially including an admission of mistakes in the handling of the migration crisis. If anything, the Paris attacks could accelerate Germany's growing Euroskepticism ahead of the general elections of 2017 and especially after the vote.

The Paris attack will also make it hard for the European Commission to defend its plan to relocate refugees across the Continent. The plan was already in serious trouble: Only a few hundred of the 120,000 men and women included in the scheme have actually been relocated. Poland said it will opt out from the plan, and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe will probably follow suit. Brussels will be too weak to introduce sanctions against the countries that choose not to participate in the plan.

Before the Paris attacks, the European Union was already trying to enhance cooperation with Turkey to prevent asylum seekers from entering Europe. The Turkish government basically made three requests: money, visa liberalization for Turkish citizens and a no-fly zone in northern Syria. The European Union has already approved giving Ankara some 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion) to deal with the migration crisis. After the Paris attacks, Brussels will probably offer more flexible visa conditions for Turkish citizens.

Now the stage is set for Turkey to solicit firmer support from the Europeans as it tries to push forward its plans to establish a "safe zone" in northern Syria. Turkey and the United States already appear to be in advanced talks over stepping up military operations in northern Syria, and Ankara is looking for diplomatic cover from NATO members to proceed, preferably with the participation of European countries willing to put boots on the ground. There is no guarantee that Turkey will get that much of a commitment from the Europeans, but it can count on broader European involvement overall in the air campaign against the Islamic State. The major question is still whether Turkey and potential coalition partners can reach an understanding with Russia to quell the fighting.

In addition, the Paris attacks could compel more EU members to seek accommodation with Russia on the end of the civil war in Syria. Countries that were originally against keeping Bashar al Assad in power could decide to stick with the devil they know to slow down emigration from Syria. This could open the door for cooperation in other issues — most notably, Ukraine — but that would happen later in the process. The European Union is still likely to extend sanctions against Moscow when they expire in late January 2016, and the United States probably will encourage its European partners to keep pressure on Russia. Moreover, even with Russian cooperation, substantial challenges remain in Syria, given the disputes over which Syrian parties can be negotiated with, the presence of extremist factions in Syria that do not want a cease-fire to be implemented, and the vast number of armed factions in the conflict.

Europe also faces limitations when it comes to a military reaction to the Paris attacks. Airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Syria and Iraq will intensify in the coming days, but Europe is unlikely to go beyond that. Germany will oppose any form of military intervention in Syria and will push for a diplomatic solution to the civil war in the country. Countries such as the United Kingdom and Italy could join the airstrikes in Syria, but they are unlikely to send ground troops to the conflict. Even U.S. President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that putting boots on the ground would be a mistake.

The Paris attacks will accelerate some processes that were already underway in Europe, such as resistance to migration and criticism of the Schengen Agreement. The attacks will also affect the European Union's already complex relationship with Turkey and Russia, but pre-existing factors — such as political divisions among member states on how to deal with Moscow and Ankara — as well as logistical constraints will continue to shape the European Union's foreign policy, regardless of what has been said publicly the past three days.

Europeans will remember 2015 as the year in which national security became an everyday concern, from Russia’s encroachments on NATO’s periphery to the jihadist threat to their urban centers. So kudos to David Cameron’s government for reversing years of cuts to Britain’s military spending with a strategic review that starts to take account of the world as it is.

“We must expect the unexpected,” the Prime Minister warned Parliament on Monday. Britain, he added, “can make sure that we have the versatility and the means to respond to new risks and threats to our security.”

To that end, the government plans to spend £2 billion ($3 billion) on additional weapons for its special forces, hire 1,900 new foreign and domestic intelligence personnel, buy 20 long-range Reaper drones, restore Britain’s maritime patrol capabilities with nine P8 Poseidon aircraft (useful for hunting Russian submarines), and add new squadrons of land-based Typhoon and sea-based F-35 jets. The government will also set aside £41 billion to build Britain’s next generation of nuclear missile submarines.

As important, Mr. Cameron seems belatedly to recognize the need for Britain to maintain robust expeditionary forces. The number of deployable troops will increase to 50,000 from 30,000, including two new strike brigades of 5,000 troops each, capable of moving on short notice. “Not one of these capabilities is an optional extra,” he noted. “These investments are an act of clear-eyed self-interest.”

The Prime Minister is surely right, though even this new spending is not sufficient given the degraded state of Britain’s military. The U.K. spent 5.4% of GDP on defense in 1982, when it was barely able to muster the forces needed to retake the Falkland Islands from Argentina. Defense spending now hovers at 2.2%—large by European standards but barely meeting the NATO minimum of 2%.

Another concern is that many of the new capabilities won’t be operational for several years, while the security threats are increasing now. Mr. Cameron wants to increase Britain’s involvement in attacking Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, but Britain’s involvement is partly limited by not having an aircraft carrier capable of deploying fixed-wing aircraft. The U.K. is building two large carriers to replace the small jump-jet carriers it retired over the last decade, but the new ships aren’t scheduled to come into service until the 2020s. Maybe they’ll be put to use against whatever comes after Islamic State.

All of this is a reminder of the danger of shortchanging the military in a belief that the world will stay peaceful without a robust deterrent. That’s one of President Obama’s signature illusions, with his predictions of a receding tide of war. U.S. defense spending is also too low in an era of multiplying threats. Still, Mr. Cameron has made a useful start, and his NATO allies should follow his lead.

Refugees are a natural byproduct of revolution. Stripped of status and security in the throes of political change, the masses will tend to sacrifice a life of familiar faces, customs and places and flock to foreign lands in search of simple things: a place to live, earn and provide for their kin in peace. But in that search for the path of least physical and political resistance, migrants cannot avoid disturbing the peace along the way. Their names, clothes, accents, languages and religions — everything that gives them a sense of place and belonging at home — make them "the other" in the eyes of their new hosts and thus undeserving of the rights and privileges of those with whom they are expected to assimilate. For the many who end up in Europe, assimilation will instead occur in the ghettos, where migrants already pushed to the fringes of society cling to rose-tinted memories of the life they left behind, widening a chasm in which radical ideas can fester for generations.

These are the conditions that threaten to radicalize and mobilize migrant offspring in France, Belgium and elsewhere. These were also the conditions endured by waves of displaced Goths who flooded the Roman Empire to flee their Hun invaders and of the millions of Eastern Europeans whose identity cards could scarcely keep up with the borders changing beneath their feet in the fervor and confusion of the world wars (the great "migration of nations," as Polish-born writer Aleksander Wat named it). In each mass migration, identities were lost, traded or hijacked along the way. As deeper phobias develop and moral restraint wears away, inventive and often dangerous schemes are developed to "solve" the problem of "the other." In 1926, the League of Nations had the idea to relocate former czarist emigres from Russia to the interior of Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru, an offer only briefly taken up by a few hundred Cossacks who warned their countrymen that a persecuted life in Europe, or even suicide, was still preferable to the exotic dangers they encountered in malaria-infested jungles. For the Third Reich, it was the ideological pursuit of lebensraum, or living space, through aggressive territorial expansion and genocide that would be framed in Nazi propaganda as an answer to Germany's post-World War I travails.Europe Struggles to Find Its Balance

If refugees are a product of revolution, then the product of mass refugee flows is often a blend of economic stress and ethnic nationalism, the foundation of many transformative geopolitical events in our time. It would therefore be prudent to think through the deeper consequences of the large numbers of migrants fleeing lawlessness in the Middle East for a European Union that was sliding into an existential crisis before the most recent wave of migrants even showed up.

Over the past century, Europe has swung dramatically between two poles. After taking a destructive leap into ethnic nationalism, years of industrial-scale killings exhausted Europe to the point that states developed the extraordinary will to sacrifice their national sovereignty for the sake of avoiding conflict and pursuing prosperity in a union of European states. Europe's storied past, in a sense, would be overcome only by pushing nationalism under the rug and focusing on making money instead. That worked only until the promise of prosperity was crushed in the financial crisis of the early 21st century.

As economic pain grew from south to north and west to east on the Continent, the Euroskeptics calling for taking care of one's own before bailing out the distant relatives in the union gained popularity and strength at the expense of the Europeanists advocating an ever-closer union. Whether the message came from the right or the left or from the creditors or the debtors of the crisis, the idea was the same: When livelihoods are threatened, a state must look after its own interests before making sacrifices for the other. Even before Syrians, Libyans and Afghans began arriving en masse on European shores, the European Union was struggling with the idea that Germany shared the identity and fate of Greece. The suggestion, then, that a German taxpayer would now have to make sacrifices for a Syrian on the run was simply a bridge too far.

The Paris attacks did not send Europe into an entirely new direction; they catalyzed the long-running and arguably inevitable trend of European fragmentation. The debate over borders — lines that distinguish one's own from the other — is a logical flashpoint. As part of the European Union's efforts to forge a common European identity, the Schengen Agreement was designed to eliminate physical borders, a policy anchored in the bloc's foundational principle of allowing free movement of Europeans across national boundaries. But as more countries from the farther reaches of the Continent joined, fears grew of Balkan peoples straining social welfare systems and bringing crime into the core of Europe. The influx of refugees from the Middle East only deepened European disillusionment with Schengen as Syrians, Libyans and other migrants took advantage of weak border controls in the Balkans to make their way north. In the wake of the Paris attacks, the potential for militants to camouflage themselves in migrant flows only reinforces Europeans' paranoia over the security of their borders.

While lengthy, sophisticated and ultimately ineffectual debates over Schengen were taking place in Brussels, the countries on the front lines of the migrant crisis took matters into their own hands. Hungary and Slovenia built fences, and border controls were reimposed throughout the Schengen zone. No one was about to wait around while Brussels tried to come up with a 28-member consensus on how to deal with the problem. The danger now is that as Greece continues to funnel refugees northward, as Hungary and Slovenia shut off their non-Schengen neighbors to the south with fences, and as the Carpathian Mountains create physical difficulties for rerouting to the east, a bottleneck will develop in the Balkans. Already, some Balkan countries are trying to cherry-pick which refugees they will accept based on nationality and religion. This is a region where numerous unsettled issues from the 1990s can spark ethnic riots that a distracted Europe will have trouble containing.

As the Schengen pillar of the European Union comes crashing down, logically we should give the foundation of the European Union — France and Germany — a closer inspection. The European Union, after all, is a form of grand compromise between Paris and Berlin whereby they put aside their historical competitive impulses along the North European Plain and economically tether themselves to each other as a form of mutual containment. An economically stagnant France is more likely to identify with its southern Mediterranean roots as it grows more alienated from its economically healthier European peers to the north. Both France and Germany will face elections in 2017. In France, the nationalist and Euroskeptic currents underpinning Marine Le Pen's far-right National Front and Nicolas Sarkozy's center-right Republicans are likely to continue strengthening as economic stresses persist and as security concerns overwhelm the state. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel's voice is already being drowned out by her more Euroskeptic Cabinet members and coalition partners who are showing less inhibition as they assert German rights in violation of pan-European interests.

Elsewhere in Europe, the United Kingdom is in the process of negotiating additional distance between itself and its European peers, creating political space for Poland to also go down a reverse-integration path. The Dutch have recently put forth an idea to create a mini-Schengen of culturally like-minded states with the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria, a grouping that harkens back to the Holy Roman Empire of the late 18th century. The fact that European elite are comfortable openly discussing a break-up into smaller blocs of culturally and historically harmonious entities and the ejection of more awkward elements such as Greece should not be taken lightly. Indeed, the debate over a "Grexit" is bound to resurface as a politically fragile Athens continues to struggle to implement reform. Germany's irritation will reverberate throughout the eurozone once again as Greece tries to leverage the growing number of refugees bottled up within its borders to negotiate a more lenient bailout timeline with its creditors. Only this time, the term Grexit and proposals to form new blocs is no longer taboo.A Cycle of Division

A divided Europe will not necessarily replicate the horrors of the early 20th century. History will rhyme, however, at the intersection of several trends running in parallel. The splintering of Europe overlays the erosion of central authority within the Sykes-Picot borders in the Middle East — borders that the Europeans created to divide the region and tighten their colonial grip. With those territories in prolonged conflict, the weakening of those regimes and the radical ideologies borne out of power vacuums will risk drawing a minority of European Muslims into battle while driving migrants into the heart of Europe, accelerating Europe's path toward fragmentation.

As the core powers of Europe become more skeptical of the benefits of the European Union, compromises on issues ranging from migration to bailout policies will become elusive. A resurgent Turkey will leverage its position as the migrant gateway to Europe to exact concessions from the West while reassuming its imperial responsibilities in northern Syria and Iraq. Russia will use European divisions to its advantage as it tries to temper a Western encroachment in its former Soviet space even as it remains just as susceptible as the Europeans to the ethnic frictions and security threats emanating from mass migrant flows.

The global hegemon, by definition, will find itself at the center of this oddly familiar set of challenges afflicting Eurasia. The United States already shoulders most of the burden in extending a security buffer against Russia in Central and Eastern Europe and in trying to put a lid on conflicts in the Middle East. But an even bigger challenge may not have fully registered on Washington's radar: the darker side of a Europe willing to re-embrace nationalism in response to a fear of the other.

The slow-motion crisis of the European Union finally seems to be coming to a head. "Europe could lose its historical footing and the project could die quickly," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned in a speech at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Things could fall apart within months," which, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble added, "would be a tragedy."

The catalyst for these fears is Britain's upcoming referendum on its EU membership, due by the end of 2017. I am writing this column having just left Congress Hall in Davos after British Prime Minister David Cameron's own speech on "Britain in the World." At least, that was what the speech was supposed to be about; in fact, it might have been better titled "Britain in the European Union (and What I Don't Like About It)." There are, to be sure, bits of Europe that Cameron does like, particularly its potential to create a single market for goods and services, but there is much more of which he disapproves. The core issue, he insisted, is that "if Europe is about ever-deepening political union, with ever-deepening political institutions, then it's not the organization for us."

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Pressed on this point in the Q&A session, Cameron accepted that "you [can] never forget that this is a group of countries that used to fight each other and kill each other, and have actually now come together in a common endeavor"; but that coming together, he suggested, was the result less of the movement toward political union than of "some values that we in Britain are very proud of, in terms of committing to democracy and freedom and rights and all the rest of it."

Much ink has been spilled over whether David Cameron's speeches about the European Union represent his own views, those of his party, or a subtle attempt to manage the British nation's political mood. Yet whatever the prime minister's motives, seeing the 70-year process of European integration as part of a much longer history of state formation casts an interesting new light on the arguments Cameron offered at Davos.Forging a New Path to Peace?

When I was a teenager growing up in 1970s Britain, no topic seemed quite as dull as the European Community (as it was called until it rebranded itself as the European Union in 1993). Nothing could get me to turn the TV off quite as quickly as yet another announcement from the bureaucrats in Brussels about what I was allowed to eat or drink and what size container it could come in. But I — and the millions of others who shared my lack of interest in all things European — was very wrong to react this way.

For 5,000 years, since the first states were created in what is now southern Iraq, governments have been using violence to create political unity and then using politics (and, when necessary, more violence) to create economic and cultural unity everywhere that their power reached. From 3000 B.C. through the late 1940s, it is hard to find a single example of a state formed in any other way. Since the late 1940s, though, Western Europeans have been turning history's most successful formula on its head.

The European Union has arguably been the most extraordinary experiment in the history of political institutions, but the reason its accomplishments seemed so boring was that dullness was the bloc's whole point. In committee meeting after committee meeting, unsung bureaucratic heroes spun a web of rules and regulations that bound the Continent's formerly sovereign states into an economic and cultural unit and then began using economics and culture to create a political unit. "The final goal," Helmut Schlesinger, the head of the German Bundesbank, explained in 1994, "is a political one … to reach any type of political unification in Europe, a federation of states, an association of states or even a stronger form of union." In this agenda, "the economic union is [merely] an important vehicle to reach this target."

For the first time in history, huge numbers of people — 500 million so far — have come together to form a bigger society without anyone using force to make them to do so. The consequences have been extraordinary: Between 1914 and 1945, Europeans killed more than 60 million people in two world wars, but by 2015 the European Union had become the safest place on Earth. Its citizens murdered each other less often than any other people on earth, its governments had abolished the death penalty, and it had renounced war within its borders (and almost renounced it outside them, too).

In 2003, opinion pollsters found that only 12 percent of French and German people thought that war was ever justified, as opposed to 55 percent of Americans. "On major strategic and international questions today," U.S. strategist Robert Kagan concluded that same year, "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus."

The contrast with the lands beyond the European Union's eastern border, where Russian leaders have not hesitated to assassinate their critics and use force against weaker neighbors, could hardly be starker. Small wonder that the Nobel Committee decided in 2012 to award its Peace Prize to the European Union as a whole.The Drawbacks of Europe's Experiment

Why, then, Cameron's insistence that "Britain has never been happy with the idea that we are part of an ever-closer political union?" My own (admittedly unsystematic) survey of the discussions makes me think that there are three main arguments. The first is tribal: as Cameron put it in Davos, "We're a proud, independent country, with proud, independent democratic traditions." Britons have not been persuaded that the gains from surrendering their independent traditions and identity outweigh the costs.

The second argument, and the one least spoken about, is geostrategic. Since the 17th century, British grand strategy has consistently revolved around engaging with the wider world while preventing any single power from dominating continental Europe. "We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual friends," Lord Palmerston, the foreign secretary, famously observed in 1848; only "our interests are eternal and perpetual." Between 1689 and 1945, Britain built and broke alliances and paid huge costs in blood and gold to prevent the political unification of Europe; and as I have discussed before, since 1945 it has carried on a delicate diplomatic dance to remain engaged with the Continent while undermining any ever-deepening political union.

Third is what seems to be the most powerful argument of all: that Europe's novel path of coercion-free state formation is just not working. For nearly 15 years after the signing of the crucial treaty at Maastricht in 1992, the opposite had seemed to be the case. From Ireland to Estonia, most Europeans began sharing a single currency and central bank, accepting rulings from a European court and parliament, and crossing borders without passports. Since 2010, however, the tedious path of consensus building has increasingly broken down.

As the countries that had adopted the euro as their currency plunged into a debt crisis (or, more accurately, a balance-of-payments crisis between the highly productive North and the less productive South), they discovered the limits of a rules-based union that lacked the centralized coercive powers of a traditional state. An old-style empire could have used force to solve the problems, as Britain did when it sent gunboats to extract debt payments from Greece in 1850; but in the new Europe, no German tanks would be rolling through the streets of Athens to restore fiscal discipline.

Having chosen a path of state formation that denied it the very possibility of enforcing its rules with violence, the European Union has been teetering on the brink of an abyss for the last five years. By late 2011, the Swiss bank UBS was even worrying that the absence of central coercive power would unleash violence of a different kind: "Almost no modern fiat currency monetary unions," its analysts observed, "have broken up without some form of authoritarian or military government, or civil war." However, as of early 2016, the much-criticized policy of masterly inactivity — doing just enough to keep indebted countries afloat, but no more — does seem to be averting disaster. Despite eye-watering unemployment, occasionally violent street protests and regularly recurring political crises, Greece has hung on within the eurozone; and despite mounting pressure on Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy and even France, none has collapsed.

Since 2014, however, a second problem has emerged for the European path toward state formation. Nearly 2 million refugees — less than half of one percent of the European Union's population, but a formidable number nonetheless — have flooded into Europe from the south and east. The borderless Schengen area, which will eventually comprise 26 of the 28 EU countries plus Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Switzerland, has struggled to cope since it was constructed in 1985. Amid scenes of misery and even violence, internal borders are returning. State formation is going into reverse.The Problem of Governing Without Power

For more than 60 years after its beginnings in the late 1940s, the European Union's revolutionary path of state formation without centralized coercive power gradually mastered its members' tribalism and local strategic interests. In many ways, this has been an inspirational story, challenging head-on Thomas Hobbes' assertion in Leviathan that the only force strong enough to prevent people from using violence to pursue self-interest is a government that has more violence at its disposal than any of its subjects.

Since 2010, however, evidence has been mounting that the European path toward state formation only really works in the best-case scenario. Confronted by genuinely Hobbesian challenges of greed and desperate refugees, the limitations of Brussels' rules and committees have become clear.

If correct, this seems to leave just two options. The first is that the champions of political union will turn the crisis of state formation into an opportunity, persuading the bloc's members to strengthen central institutions at the expense of local ones and thereby giving Brussels the powers it needs to tackle the forces of dissolution. Right now, however, that does not seem to be the direction Europe is moving in.

The second option is the one that Cameron championed at Davos: rejecting "ever-deepening political union, with ever-deepening political institutions" as Europe's goal. Cameron's claim that the pacification of Europe since 1945 has been a product of the Continent's shared democratic values rather than of political integration sweetens the pill, but rests on an unstated counterfactual assumption — that even if European nations had not surrendered so much of their sovereignty since the late 1940s, pacification would have happened anyway. In favor of Cameron's counterfactual is the point that violence has declined across most of the world in the last 70 years even though the number of independent nation-states has grown; against it, perhaps, the fact that violence has declined more inside the European Union than anywhere else.

No one has a crystal ball, and because Europe's experiment in state formation without violence is unique in the annals of history, we cannot even appeal to arguments from analogy to see where it might lead. One of the clearest trends of the last 10,000 years has been the creation of larger and larger political units, which might mean that Cameron is wrong and that the European Union will somehow muddle through. On the other hand, because these larger units have always been formed by governments monopolizing the use of legitimate violence within their territories and because this is the one strategy that the European Union has always rejected, perhaps we should conclude that Cameron is right, and that ever-deepening political union is a dead letter.

Back in 1651, Hobbes speculated that Leviathan — an awe-inspiring government controlling sufficient force to deter its subjects from using violence in their own interests — could be created in more than one way. The most common route, he surmised, was what he called "commonwealth by acquisition," which depended on threats and coercion, "as when a man maketh his children, to submit themselves, and their children to his government, as being able to destroy them if they refuse; or by war subdueth his enemies to his will, giving them their lives on that condition." However, Hobbes argued, it was also possible for there to be "commonwealth by institution … when men agree amongst themselves, to submit to some man, or assembly of men, voluntarily."

More than three centuries on from Leviathan, the European Union has been giving commonwealth by institution the most serious test it has ever had. It has been a noble and inspiring experiment in solving collective action problems without the threat of coercion. But if Cameron was right in Davos, the experiment is failing.

Europe’s system of passport-free travel is on the way to history’s dustbin. The latest sign came Wednesday after the European Union issued a report faulting Greece for its handling of the refugee crisis. Greece now has three months to rectify its migrant-processing shortcomings or face suspension from Schengen, the treaty that facilitates visa-free travel across European frontiers.

The report followed Monday’s warning from EU interior ministers that they could move the EU’s external border up to Central Europe, effectively fencing Greece outside Schengen. Border controls have already been erected by Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway and Sweden, while Britain and Ireland were never in the Schengen area. Expect other borders to close as the next wave of migrants moves in with warmer weather.

We don’t usually sympathize with Greece’s left-wing government, but it’s hard to see what Brussels expected in the face of the human tide. Most of the million refugees who arrived in Europe last year came by way of Greece’s Aegean islands. The EU has provided Greece a paltry €28 million ($30.4 million) in emergency funding to field five “hotspot” processing centers on the Greek isles, of which only one is in operation. That’s in addition to the €474 million in routine migration-management assistance the EU pledged to Greece from 2014 to 2020. By comparison, the EU donates some €100 million a year to Myanmar.

Europe’s real problem is Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refusal to set a ceiling on the number of refugees Germany is willing to accept, combined with Europe’s failure to create safe zones in Syria, Libya and other failed states to stop the refugee flow. Migrants will continue to take desperate risks to get to Europe as long as they are fleeing chaos—and Germany continues to promise shelter, welfare and eventual citizenship.

Mrs. Merkel has sought to get other European countries to take in migrants on a quota system, but Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia have vowed to veto the plan. An effort last fall by Mrs. Merkel to persuade Ankara to do a better job of policing its own borders in exchange for European money and visa-free travel for Turks has yielded no results.

Meantime, the risk that the refugee crisis will become a security one continues to grow, with French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve warning Monday that Islamic State has “set up a true industry of fake passports.” A Paris-style attack perpetrated by terrorists masquerading as refugees would be a tragedy and cause a political backlash that could favor Europe’s far-right typified by France’s Marine Le Pen.

A borderless Europe is still an ideal worth fighting for—assuming Europe can police its external borders and intervene abroad to prevent the tragedies of the Middle East from becoming its own. If Europe’s centrist leaders can’t do it, they will pave the way for the rise of their own Donald Trumps.

My guess is that it will be a close vote to stay in since this is almost margin of error close and people are mostly afraid of change. Similarly, Scotland voted narrowly to stay in the U.K.

Which way would YOU vote? My instinct would be to vote yes for the economic common market, no for open borders, no for Euro currency and in this case no for E.U.

Being just one member is too little control of your own country. The E.U. is not a country. It is not an e pluribus unum, out of many, one. Nor are we anymore, but Europe is less so. Too many screwed up, failing states, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece... and too much going wrong in the so called stronger ones such as a million new refugees in Germany, trouble in France, Brussels, etc.

I wonder what others here think. If you were British, how would you vote to exit or remain in the European Union.

(Do we have a separate Great Britain, U.K. thread?)

The E.U. is clearly stronger and better off with the UK in. But what does the U.K. gain in return? They don't even want the currency and neither side would gain from a trade war retaliation of their exit. EU has no defense beyond the larger countries acting on their own.

The future of the EU will be the richer, more productive states bailing out the poorer, less productive ones. As a richer nation, wouldn't you get out at every opportunity?

But the real, driving force of this is, out of control, open immigration. Because it is in the EU, the UK does not have the sovereignty to stop the current invasion. Wouldn't they want to get the power back? The UK should make UK immigration decisions. No?

Right now we look at the British EU exit vote but the whole German-European question is even harder to understand. Germany is the stable economy of the EU, holding up places like Greece. What does Germany gain from it? Export markets, for one thing but wouldn't they have that anyway?

Just like the monetary question here, zero interest policy hurts savers. Zero interest rate policy hurts Germany. But Germany doesn't have a central bank; they are part of a union of 19 nation-states. the immigration explosion some saw as a demographic opportunity will be called in question by the voters. The political direction of Germany could change next year and those who pursued nonsense and danger might find themselves out.

Worthwhile read, accept for their misguided advice to re-energize their economy through increased spending.

Behind the war of words between Berlin and the European Central Bank is a convergence of problems that might have repercussions for all of Europe. Both sides have a point. The fact that next year will see elections in Germany is creating unnecessary nervousness.

After months of taking repeated drubbings by leading German politicians, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi decided to strike back. In a stinging and seldom seen rebuke, issued in response to charges that the ECB is hurting the German economy, the fiercely independent institution released a research paper documenting how it isn't the ECB's monetary policy that is hurting Germany, but rather the domestic policies of successive German governments.

Draghi has been excoriated relentlessly by German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble for allegedly depriving German savers and pensioners of money by way of the ECB's expansive monetary policies, which have depressed interest rates. Schauble went so far as to say that Draghi's decisions to pump billions of euros into the European money market were pushing voters to populist parties.

On May 30 Schauble reiterated his warnings about the ECB. The rebuke came just one year ahead of general elections in Germany.

The ECB's research paper opines that Berlin's investment policy (or the lack thereof) is at fault. The Bank reasons that a dearth of public investment into the country's infrastructure, research and development, and German consumer spending in general is holding back the German economy.

In short: Because the ECB is keeping interest rates low, it is much easier for the German government to take on cheap loans -- something which it can easily do, since it has a budget surplus and national debt is declining fast -- and invest, thereby boosting the domestic economy.

Ramifications for all of Europe

The outcome of the debate between the ECB and Berlin is all the more important because Germany has a current account surplus thanks to its strong exports. As one economic truism goes: One man's gain is another man's loss.

Yet a country's economy cannot live on exports alone; it also needs to enthrall consumers into buying more German products, which will also aid supplier countries to Germany. If German consumers buy more products, so the ECB argues, the economies of European countries where those products are partly produced or assembled will benefit, thus lifting the entire European economy.

The ECB's reasoning in this case fits right in with what many economists have been saying for years: that the German consumer needs to boost all of Europe by buying European. So far the German government has resisted pressure to dig into its pockets and boost domestic spending.

Yet on the other hand there is a case for Berlin's point of view. Germany's leaders realize that further down the line, the country is facing enormous problems.

Germany is a demographic time bomb. Germans will be leaving the labor force in droves in the coming years, straining the German collective welfare state. There are simply too many people reaching retirement age and too few young people picking up the tab, especially to finance the country's cherished healthcare system. This while the German pensions system isn't sufficient for Germans to keep up retirement incomes equal to their expenditures.

So Germans like to save for their retirement. Low interest rates on their savings are making a lot of elderly Germans understandably nervous as their retirement looms closer.

This economic reality helped push Angela Merkel's open-door policy for refugees. She aims to quickly integrate approximately 1 million refugees into the German labor force. This new blood will hopefully help to pay the bills.

The war of words between the ECB and Berlin shouldn't need to be a matter of either-or. While the ECB agrees that in the short term, interest rates are depressed by the Central Bank's expansive monetary policy, in the long run, smart public spending by the German government, such as in its truly ailing infrastructure, should lift all boats -- in Germany and Europe. People in other European countries will have more money in their pockets with which to buy German products in the years to come.

It's just that it is a tough message to sell for Angela Merkel's CDU party with a new populist, pro-savers party in the shape of the popular Alternative fur Deutschland breathing down her neck in the upcoming election campaign. Expect more artillery barrages between Berlin and the ECB until the voting booths close.

All kinds of good news (sarc.) around the world in year 8 of Barack Obama's stint as leader of the free world. Latin America, China and Europe collapsing... whatever... Yes, Obama had a hand in Hollande's failure, and also, simply, socialism fails.

... The government has not been able to staunch the rebellion on the streets. The protests have taken two different, but equally menacing, directions. The first, Nuit Debout (Rise Up at Night), is unprecedented. Convening every evening at Place de la République, thousands of students, workers, and activists practice direct democracy. Holding general assemblies -- one part group therapy session, one part constituent assembly -- participants speak briefly on issues ranging from unfair housing practices to the ongoing state of emergency.

The movement’s slogan -- “Our Dreams Don’t Fit Your Ballot Boxes” -- is a worthy ideal, but hard to translate into policy. As for the other form of protest, its anti-government slogan might as well be “Your Dreams Are Our Nightmares.” These traditional labor union strikes are rooted in the long history of what, 40 years ago, sociologist Michel Crozier called “la société bloquée,” or “the stalled society.” The French, Crozier argued, distrust negotiation and compromise, and do not identify with political parties. Given their “horror of face-to-face contact,” their resistance to cooperation, and their fear of innovation, the French are most comfortable with confrontation. The take-no-prisoners policy of both the government and the General Federation of Workers, the militant union leading the strikes, suggests that Crozier’s analysis is still pertinent. With the start next week of the Euro Cup football championship, hosted by France, one or the other side will have to blink.

...The most likely candidate for this providential man is, in fact, a woman: Marine Le Pen, leader of the extreme right-wing National Front. Le Pen’s approval ratings continue to climb, and last month, in a poll taken for the newspaper Le Parisien, she outdistanced Hollande in the second round of next year’s presidential election, 55 percent to 45 percent.

While she fares less well against some of the other contenders, Le Pen’s growing strength nevertheless underscores the republic’s predicament: its survival perhaps depends on someone whose politics resembles that of another providential figure: Philippe Pétain, the head of the xenophobic, reactionary, and authoritarian Vichy regime. Over the next few weeks, it is not just the Euro Cup, but perhaps also the Fifth Republic that will be at stake.

Likewise. When I read the headline, massive generational divide, I didn't guess which way it would split. Youth are trained to be one world government advocates and the EU is a big step in that direction. Like American exceptionalism, one would have to believe in Britain is exceptional as compared to Europe in order to favor the surrender of sovereignty.

Does anyone remember when the biggest power in Europe was bombing the sh*t out of England? Young people don't. Does anyone believe the UK, such as it was under Thatcher for example, is capable of greater things economically than the stagnant, socialistic states of most of the rest of Europe? Not if you favor stagnant, wealth fighting socialism.

I wonder what our view here would be if we were British. The Spectator UK seems to sum up my view at the moment (below). All that is good with European affiliation is possible without taking with it all that is bad. The UK can negotiate a free trade agreement with the EU. Worst case if they don't out of retaliation is the 4% WTO tariff limit. Not enough to give up sovereignty over. Otherwise, what else do they receive with EU membership, loss of sovereignty, a failing currency, handcuffed national security, economic guarantees to failed states, and an invasion of people they are unable to control or assimilate. The vote is this Thursday.

This article refers to the 1975 vote. I traveled to the capitals in Europe in December 1991 in advance of the Europe '92 initiative, Maastricht Treaty that opened up European telecom networks to outside suppliers. The free trade aspects of the European initiative have been amazingly positive. The immigration and defense aspects have not.-----------------------------------------------------"The question... is not whether Britain should co-operate with our European allies; the question is how."

"As the world’s fifth-largest economy, Britain has a reasonable chance (to put it mildly) of being able to cut trade deals with countries keen to access our consumers."

...when Britain last held a referendum...only two national titles backed what is now called Brexit: the Morning Star and The Spectator.

Our concern then was simple: we did not believe that the Common Market was just about trade. We felt it would be followed by an attempted common government, which would have disastrous effects on a continent distinguished by its glorious diversity. The whole project seemed to be a protectionist scam, an attempt to try to build a wall around the continent rather than embrace world trade. Such European parochialism, we argued, did not suit a globally minded country such as Britain. On the week of the 1975 referendum, The Spectator’s cover line was: ‘Out – and into the world.’ We repeat that line today.

Since 1975 the EU has mutated in exactly the way we then feared and now resembles nothing so much as the Habsburg Empire in its dying days. A bloated bureaucracy that has outgrown all usefulness. A parliament that represents many nations, but with no democratic legitimacy. Countries on its periphery pitched into poverty, or agitating for secession. The EU’s hunger for power has been matched only by its incompetence. The European Union is making the people of our continent poorer, and less free.

This goes far beyond frustration at diktats on banana curvature. The EU has started to deform our government. Michael Gove revealed how, as a cabinet member, he regularly finds himself having to process edicts, rules and regulations that have been framed at European level. Laws that no one in Britain had asked for, and which no one elected to the House of Commons has the power to change. What we refer to as British government is increasingly no such thing. It involves the passing of laws written by people whom no one in Britain elected, no one can name and no one can remove.

Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s chief strategist for many years, gave an example of this institutional decay. A few months into his job in No. 10, he was dismayed to find his colleagues making slow progress because they were all bogged down by paperwork that he didn’t recognise. He asked for an audit, and was shocked by the results: only a third of what the government was doing was related to its agenda. Just over half was processing orders from Brussels. To him, this was more than just a headache: it was an insidious and accelerating bureaucratic takeover.

With the EU’s fundamental lack of democracy comes complacency on the part of its leaders and the corruption of those around them — which has led us to the present situation. Voters are naturally concerned about the extraordinary rise of immigration, and their governments’ inability to control it. Free movement of people might have been a laudable goal before the turn of the century, when the current global wave of migration started. But today, with the world on the move, the system strikes a great many Europeans as madness. The EU’s failure to handle immigration has encouraged the people trafficking industry, a global evil that has led to almost 3,000 deaths in the Mediterranean so far this year.

In theory, the EU is supposed to protect its member states by insisting that refugees claim asylum in the first country they enter. In practice, this law — the so-called Dublin Convention — was torn up by Angela Merkel when she recklessly said that all Syrians could settle in Germany if they somehow managed to get there. Blame lies not with the tens of thousands who subsequently arrived but with a system hopelessly unequal to such a complex and intensifying challenge.

The Spectator was, again, alone in the British press in opposing Britain’s entry to the Exchange Rate Mechanism from the beginning. Why, we asked, should the Bundesbank control another country’s interest rates? When the single currency came along, the risks became greater: what if a country’s economy crashed, but it was denied the stimulus of a devaluing currency?

The answer can now be seen across Europe. Sado–austerity in Italy. Youth unemployment of about 50 per cent in Greece and Spain. The evisceration of these economies, in the name of a project supposed to bring people together, has been a tragedy.

Last week, a Pew poll showed how far dismay about the EU extends across the continent. In Greece, 71 per cent now view the EU unfavourably; in France, it’s 61 per cent. In Britain, it was 48 per cent — about the same as Spain, Germany and the Netherlands. This was why David Cameron had a strong case for renegotiation: the demand for change was widespread, and growing. A recent poll has suggested that Swedes will vote to leave the EU if Britain does. The absence of a deal worth the name was final proof that the EU is structurally incapable of reform.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the unelected president of the European Commission, sees intransigence as a great strength. His priority is the survival of the EU and the single currency: the welfare of Europeans and even the notion of democratic consent seem distant concerns. When he dismisses the ever-louder voices of protest as the shriek of ‘populism’, he echoes the Bertolt Brecht poem: ‘Would it not be easier… to dissolve the people/ and elect another?’ When Britain asked for reform, he took a gamble: that we were bluffing and would not dare vote to leave.

All this has placed the Prime Minister in an impossible position. Unable to make a positive case for staying in the EU, he instead tells us that Britain is trapped within it and that the penalties for leaving are too severe. His scare stories, peppered with made-up statistics, have served only to underline the emptiness of the case for remaining. It also represents a style of politics that many find repugnant. The warnings from the IMF and OECD and other acronyms have served only to reinforce the caricature of a globalised elite telling the governed what to think.

Talk of anyone being made ‘worse off’ by Brexit is deeply misleading. Of the many economists who have made projections for 2030, none have suggested that we’d be poorer. The question is whether we’d be, say, 36 per cent better off or 41 per cent better off by then. Not that anyone knows, given the monstrously large margin of error in 15-year predictions. So these studies offer no real reasons to be fearful. This is perhaps why George Osborne had to resort to concocting figures, such as his now notorious claim that households would be £4,300 worse off. If the economic case against Brexit were so strong, why would the Chancellor have to resort to fabrications?

As the world’s fifth-largest economy, Britain has a reasonable chance (to put it mildly) of being able to cut trade deals with countries keen to access our consumers. The worst-case scenario is to use World Trade Organisation rules, tariffs of about 4 per cent. That’s a relatively small mark-up, and the effect would be more than offset by a welcome drop in the pound. And if house prices fall, as the Chancellor predicts, then so much the better. A great many would-be homeowners have been praying for just that.

There would certainly be turbulence, which would be the price of our leaving the EU. This would affect City financiers more than the skilled working class (two thirds of whom support Brexit). This week, we’re being invited to panic at the prospect of a falling pound. But why? A weaker currency would give our exporters the stimulus they need.

The question at this referendum is not whether Britain should co-operate with our European allies; the question is how. Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6, has explained how our intelligence alliances are bilateral. Our closest is with the ‘five eyes’ of the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The Lancaster House agreements with France over military co-operation is another example. Alliances work when they are between nations with a shared agenda, with the ability and (crucially) the will to act.

The EU is an alliance of the unwilling, which is why it is useless on security — as we saw with Bosnia and Libya. Even the migrant crisis has to be handled by Nato, which has been the true guarantor of western security. It’s sometimes claimed that Vladimir Putin would want Britain to vote for Brexit. This is unlikely: what could suit the Kremlin more than European security being entrusted to the most dysfunctional organisation in the West?

EU campaign 520x100

As David Cameron rightly says, the British way is to fight rather than quit. Given that the EU has proved that it is structurally incapable of reform, we now have a choice. Do we cave in, because we’re too scared to leave? Or do we vote to retrieve our sovereignty, walk away from the whole racket and engage with the world on our own terms? A vote to leave would represent an extraordinary vote of confidence in the project of the United Kingdom and the principle of national self-determination. It would also show reform-minded Europeans that theirs is not a lost cause. And that we stand willing to help forge a Europe based on freedom, co–operation and respect for sovereignty.

The value of sovereignty cannot be measured by any economist’s formula. Adam Smith, the father of economics, first observed that the prosperity of a country is decided by whether it keeps its ‘laws and institutions’ healthy. This basic insight explains why nations thrive or fail, and has been the great secret of British success: intellectual, artistic, scientific and industrial. The principles of the Magna Carta and achievements of the Glorious Revolution led to our emergence as a world power. To pass up the chance to stop our laws being overridden by Luxembourg and our democracy eroded by Brussels would be a derogation of duty to this generation and the next.

No one — economist, politician or mystic — knows what tumult we can expect in the next 15 years. But we do know that whatever happens, Britain will be better able to respond and adapt as a sovereign country living under its own laws. The history of the last two centuries can be summed up in two words: democracy matters. Let’s vote to defend it on 23 June.

​Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Yesterday the British people stood up for their freedom. Today the world is a different place.

Celebrities and politicians swarmed television studios to plead with voters to stay in the EU. Anyone who wanted to leave was a fascist. Economists warned of total collapse if Britain left the European Union. Alarmist broadcasts threatened that every family would lose thousands of pounds a year if Brexit won.

Even Obama came out to warn Brits of the economic consequences of leaving behind the EU.

Every propaganda gimmick was rolled out. Brexit was dismissed, mocked and ridiculed. It was for lunatics and madmen. Anyone who voted to leave the benevolent bosom of the European Union was an ignorant xenophobe who had no place in the modern world. And that turned out to be most of Britain.

While Londonistan, that post-British city of high financial stakes and low Muslim mobs, voted by a landslide to remain, a decisive majority of the English voted to wave goodbye to the EU. 67% of Tower Hamlets, the Islamic stronghold, voted to stay in the EU. But to no avail. The will of the people prevailed.

And the people did not want migrant rape mobs in their streets and Muslim massacres in their pubs. They were tired of Afghani migrants living in posh homes with their four wives while they worked hard and sick of seeing their daughters passed around by “Asian” cabbies from Pakistan in ways utterly indistinguishable from the ISIS slave trade while the police looked the other way so as not to appear racist. And, most of all, they were sick of the entire Eurocratic establishment that let it all happen.

British voters chose freedom. They decided to reclaim their destiny and their nation from the likes of Count Herman Von Rompuy, the former President of the European Council, selected at an “informal” meeting who has opposed direct elections for his job and insisted that, “the word of the future is union.”

When Nigel Farage of UKIP told Count Von Rompuy that “I can speak on behalf of the majority of British people in saying that we don't know you, we don't want you and the sooner you are put out to grass, the better,” he was fined for it by the Bureau of the European Parliament after refusing to apologize. But now it’s Farage and the Independence Party who have had the last laugh.

The majority of British people didn’t want Count Von Rompuy and his million-dollar pension, or Donald Tusk, Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and the rest of the monkeys squatting on Britain’s back.

Count Von Rompuy has lost his British provinces. And the British people have their nation back.

The word of the future isn’t “union.” It’s “freedom.” A process has begun that will not end in Britain. It will spread around the world liberating nations from multinational institutions.

During Obama’s first year in office, Count Von Rompuy grandly declared that “2009 is also the first year of global governance.” Like many such predictions, it proved to be dangerously wrong. And now it may just well be that 2016 will be the first year of the decline and fall of global governance.

An anti-establishment wind is blowing through the creaky house of global government. The peoples of the free world have seen how the choking mass of multilateral institutions failed them economically and politically. Global government is an expensive and totalitarian proposition that silences free speech and funnels rapists from Syria, Sudan and Afghanistan to the streets of European cities and American towns. It’s a boon for professional consultants, certain financial insiders and politicians who can hop around unelected offices and retire with vast unearned pensions while their constituents are told to work another decade. But global government is misery and malaise for everyone else.

The campaign to stay in the EU relied on fear and alarmism, on claims of bigotry and disdain for the working class voters who fought and won the right to decide their own destiny. But the campaign for independence asked Britons to believe in their own potential when unchained from the Eurocratic bureaucracy. And now Brexit will become a model for liberation campaigns across Europe.

And it will not end there.

Brexit showed that it is possible for a great nation to defy its leaders and its establishment thinkers to throw off its multinational chains. And while the European Union is one of the biggest prisons forged by global government, it is far from the only one. America and Britain are sleeping giants covered in the cold iron links of multinational organizations that limit their strength and their potential.

It is time to break those chains.

Americans who want to cut their ties with the United Nations have found Brexit inspiring. Leaving the UK was once also seen as a ridiculous idea at the margins that could never be taken seriously. Serious politicians refused to listen to it. Serious thinkers refused to discuss it. And then it gathered speed.

There is growing opposition even among Democrats to treaties like the TPP. Trump has challenged NAFTA. Americans across the political spectrum are suspicious of economic treaties and organizations. Support for Brexit came from Labour areas in the UK. Support for Trump’s challenge to multinational treaties and alliances could very well come from unexpected places, like Bernie Sanders backers.

Brexit has shown us the weakness of the multinational establishment. Its vast bureaucratic power rests on using the media to suppress political dissent. When the media’s special pleading fails to stop the democratic process, it is more helpless than any dictator when the outraged mob pours into his palace.

What was true of Britain, is also true of America. Our elites are just as impotent. The power they have illegally seized is defended zealously by a media palace guard that spends every minute of every day lecturing, hectoring and messaging Americans. But when no one listens to the media, then the men and women who run our lives, who feed off us like a colony of parasitic insects, are helpless.

Their power is purely persuasive. When we stop listening, then we are free.

That is the lesson of Brexit. It is the future.

The future is not a vast behemoth of global government that swallows up nations and individuals, that reduces democratic elections to a joke and eliminates freedom of speech, but the individual. The elites have gambled everything on big government, big media and big data. But all of those lost to Brexit.

They lost to Brexit in the UK. They can lose in the US too. And they will lose.

The power of the establishment is illusory. Like the naked emperor, it depends on no one challenging it. The harder it is challenged, the harder it will fall. Brexit was an impossible dream. Then it was reality.

Our impossible dreams, the policies that conservatives are told by the establishment are not even worth talking about, can be just as real as Brexit.

If we are willing to fight for them.

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"You have enemies? Good. That means that you have stood up for something, sometime in your life." - Winston Churchill.

Interesting times made possible by the Brexit vote. Without it we were turning into Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, Orwell's '1984' nations.

Northern Ireland interested in re-joining Ireland is a good thing, right? I love Scotland but not their politics. Let them join with whomever they wish, except for the military installations that belong to the UK and NATO. London can put up the London wall and enjoy all the prosperity of East Berlin, pre-Reagan.

The vote is to bring back sovereignty, to decide these issues as a nation, not solve all problems automatically. It is still a divided nation.

This was their independence day, only half of them including all of the elites didn't want it.

Panic in the UK, OMG, we don't have rule from afar anymore. How will we possibly survive?

I hate to comment on markets because they will move a different direction as soon as I say anything, but it looks to me like the markets have stabilized in a day and that the German, French and Euro markets dropped further than the British market.

EU wanted free trade with Britain in the EU, why wouldn't they want that now? Or is all the panic and doom-saying intentional?

Why hasn't our own Bozo in Chief signed a free trade agreement with Britain yet? Obama promised retaliation and he delivers. Where was all that integrity on healthcare and selling the Iran deal?

I didn't find that they made a point. They are no doubt right in their reporting that one Leave-advocate believes immigration will continue after Leave and another opposes putting all EU money into socialized healthcare, but how is that the story? British voters can put their EU money into healthcare or not with Leave, a choice they did not have with remain. How could the Leave campaign promise zero immigration? In my posts on this, the Leave campaign was promoting that Britain instead of EU decide that issue for Britain. "Zero immigration" is either a straw argument or a bad idea in the first place. The vote was to leave the EU, being ruled from afar. Out of control immigration was the largest factor but not the issue on the ballot. They can vote out their 'rino's' (TINOs?) next if they continue the invasion, an option that would have been made moot with Remain.

"if people watching think that they have voted and there is now going to be zero immigration from the EU, they are going to be disappointed.”

Who wants zero immigration, zero movement, zero mobility or zero ties with the continent? What people want is an end to the invasion.

The flip side is what is true. If you vote remain and win, you lose your country. Nearly half the country said yes to that - including 'The Guardian'.

Seek with agenda-based reporting and you will an angle to make your opponent look bad. Put it on the front page, top center, and it is a big story. That's what it looks like to me.

ShareHow a Brexit Would Undermine Europe's Balance of PowerGeopolitical WeeklyJune 21, 2016 | 08:03 GMT PrintText SizeIf Britain quits the European Union, it risks disrupting the base of power the bloc has come to rest on. (CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/Getty Images)

By Adriano Bosoni

Britain's approaching referendum has led to rampant speculation about the economic and financial consequences of a vote to leave the European Union. And indeed, in the wake of a Brexit, uncertainty — the archenemy of economic growth and financial stability — would abound. But if Britain withdraws from the Continental bloc, its primary effect would be geopolitical, shaking the balance of power in Europe to its very foundation and forcing the bloc to rethink its role in the world.

The Franco-German alliance is the cornerstone on which European power dynamics rest. Conflict between the two drove three Continental wars between 1870 and 1945; its resolution facilitated peace after World War II, planting the seeds of eventual integration through the European Union. But France and Germany are not the only countries shaping Europe's course. A third actor plays the role of power broker between the two, stabilizing their relationship and, by extension, the Continent: the United Kingdom.

When France and West Germany founded the European Economic Community (EEC), the European Union's predecessor, in the 1950s, they had two goals. The first was to create a political and economic structure that would bind the two states together, reducing the chances of another war breaking out in Europe. The second was to facilitate trade and investment to rejuvenate Europe's war-weary economies. Both were pleased with the solution they found: France felt it had neutralized its eastern neighbor while maintaining control of Continental politics, and Germany had successfully reconciled with the West.

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom's relationship with the European project was somewhat ambiguous. As an island nation, Britain historically had been shielded from events unfolding on the mainland. If the United Kingdom intervened in Continental affairs, it was usually to ensure that power remained balanced and yet dispersed enough to keep Britain safe. When the EEC was born, London initially reacted with skepticism, wary of any project that would transfer more sovereignty from the British Parliament to unelected technocrats in Brussels. France, moreover, was eager to keep Britain out of the bloc; it was concerned about granting EEC membership to a country Charles de Gaulle described as "an American Trojan Horse in Europe." De Gaulle was also reluctant to include the only country in Western Europe capable of competing with France for leadership of the bloc. It came as no surprise when, in the 1960s, France vetoed Britain's membership twice.

But in the early 1970s, things changed. De Gaulle was no longer France's president, and both Paris and Berlin were quickly realizing the geopolitical importance of expanding the EEC's membership. Across the English Channel, London had lost its empire and was in the midst of reassessing its international priorities and trade relationships. Though it saw EEC membership as an opportunity to influence the process of Continental integration, Britain's interest in accessing the common market far outweighed its aspirations of building a federal Europe. Unlike France and Germany, Britain had little enthusiasm for transforming the Continent into a United States of Europe.

These motives formed the basis of Britain's modern relationship with Europe, which was largely established during the administration of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Under the Tory leader, Britain simultaneously pushed to lower its contribution to the EEC budget and eliminate trade barriers inside the bloc. In Thatcher's now-famous Bruges Speech, she dismissed the notion of a federal Europe, instead describing the Continental organization as an agreement among sovereign states to establish free trade. A few years later her successor, John Major, negotiated Britain's opt-out from the eurozone.

Thatcher also advocated enlarging the EEC to the east, a strategy Labour Party Prime Minister Tony Blair continued in the early 2000s. Bringing the former communist states under the Continental umbrella not only sped up their transition to market economies but also created new demand for British exports. As an added perk for London, the bloc's expansion into a larger and more loosely connected entity helped to dilute France and Germany's hold over Europe.

But Britain's approach has produced only mixed results. Few new EU members have joined the eurozone, showing the limits of the federal union, and many share Thatcher's view of the bloc as a pact among sovereign states. At the same time, the admission of countries such as Poland and Romania has led to a significant increase in immigration to the United Kingdom, a development that Brexit supporters consider a primary reason for leaving the bloc. Upsetting the Balance of Power

If Britain quits the European Union, though, it risks disrupting the base of power the bloc has come to rest on. Germany relies on Britain's backing when it comes to promoting free trade in the face of France's protectionist tendencies. France sees Britain as not only a key defense partner but also a potential counterweight to German influence. Removing Britain from the equation would shatter this tenuous arrangement at a particularly dangerous time for the deeply fragmented Europe, when neither Germany nor France is satisfied with the status quo.

Should the "leave" camp win the British referendum, tension would rise between the Continent's north and south. Countries in Southern Europe want to turn the European Union into a transfer union that redistributes wealth from the relatively rich north to the less developed south and shares risk equally among members. Northern Europe, by comparison, is eager to protect its affluence and would agree to share risk only if the bloc assumed greater control over the south's ability to borrow and spend. The regions also disagree on how the European Union should use its funds. Southern Europe advocates generous subsidies for agriculture and development, a view most Eastern European states share, but Northern Europe would prefer to freeze or even reduce the bloc's budget.

As a net contributor to the European Union's budget, Britain has been particularly vocal on these issues. According to VoteWatch Europe, the country was on the losing side of votes related to EU spending more often than any other member between 2009 and 2015. Generally speaking, Northern European states such as Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark tend to vote alongside Britain. Germany also usually sees see eye to eye with Britain on certain topics, such as Europe's common market, though the two tend to disagree on issues like the environment. But regardless of other members' stances, Britain has proved more willing than any of its peers to openly voice opposition to EU decisions. Without it, the European Union would be short a liberalizing and market-friendly member, and the bloc's political balance would shift in the favor of protectionist countries in Southern Europe such as France, Italy and Spain.

As fears of a takeover by this Mediterranean group grow among Northern European governments, they would probably become more resistant to the process of Continental integration. After all, the European Union is already deeply divided over related issues such as the eurozone and Schengen Agreement, which have little to do with Britain since it is not a member of either. The looming referendum has only revealed more points of contention within the bloc that would be aggravated by a Brexit. The Dutch government, for example, recently argued for limiting membership in the Schengen zone to a handful of countries in Northern Europe, while the right-wing Alternative for Germany party proposed the creation of a "northern eurozone."

The north-south divide would not be the only gulf to widen on the Continent, either. Should Britain leave, the European Union would split between east and west, too. Countries in Central and Eastern Europe see Britain as the defender of non-eurozone members' interests, and many share London's views on the sovereignty of member states. Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, for instance, are generally supportive of the European Union but suspicious of Brussels' attempts to interfere with their domestic affairs. In particular, these countries have sympathized with British Prime Minister David Cameron's campaign to give national parliaments more power to block EU legislation. Poland and the Baltic states also see Britain as a critical partner on the issue of Russia, since London has fought for a tough European stance against Moscow in response to its annexation of Crimea. In the event that Britain leaves the Continental bloc, its Central and Eastern European allies may eventually become more isolated from Brussels.Weakening Europe's Influence Abroad

The loss of one of the few EU members that is able to operate on a global scale would undermine the bloc's external strength as well. Only France can match the international presence Britain has, thanks to London's vast political and economic connections and its considerable military prowess. Though a Brexit would not keep Britain from cooperating with Europe completely, given its continued NATO membership and shared security interests with France and Germany, its collaboration with the Continent would be limited. As a result, Europe's ability to cope with challenges abroad — whether the migrant crisis, international terrorism or a more assertive Russia — would diminish.

Germany's and France's recent calls for the European Union to deepen its military and security cooperation seem to suggest the two are concerned about this very outcome. Berlin has steadfastly avoided taking on the more active role in world affairs that a Brexit would require. Since the start of the European financial crisis, Germany has reluctantly shouldered the burden of leading the bloc's political and economic policymaking, but assuming a prominent military role is another matter. France, for one, would accept it only within the framework of an EU-wide military union, something that would be difficult to achieve amid the atmosphere of isolationism that has settled over the Continent. The political calculations of French and German leaders preparing for general elections in 2017 would make such cooperation even harder to come by.

No matter what British voters choose, the damage to Europe has already been done. If Britain leaves the European Union, it would throw the Continent into yet another political and economic crisis, giving Euroskeptic forces greater ammunition against the bloc and voters fewer reasons to defend it. But if Britain keeps its membership, it would have proved to other European governments that it is possible to demand concessions from Brussels while winning support at home. And so, regardless of what happens June 23, Britain has set a precedent that Brussels cannot stop other EU members from following.

The Left's response to Brexit is clear and their intentions are now splayed open for the world to see.

They label Brexit as a catastrophic, which of course it is not.

The controlling "elites" or whatever we call them, ( I think there are better names) are clear they WILL make Britain pay for this . Obama also made it clear GB would pay by making the country go to the back of the bus. He later walked back his words but we all know he meant what he said when he said it and the later word is just to hide his intentions.

If the Right (us) had a real good spokesperson we might have been able to fend this off. Trump is not looking good at this point.

The establishment Republicans will respond to this NOT by fighting back, but by figuring out how they can make futures for themselves in the Left's agenda. Just as they have done since Herbert Bush.

PARIS — IF there’s one thing that chafes French pride, it’s seeing the British steal the limelight. But in the face of real courage, even the proudest French person can only tip his hat and bow. The decision that the people of Britain have just made was indeed an act of courage — the courage of a people who embrace their freedom.

Brexit won out, defeating all forecasts. Britain decided to cast off from the European Union and reclaim its independence among the world’s nations. It had been said that the election would hinge solely on economic matters; the British, however, were more insightful in understanding the real issue than commentators like to admit.

British voters understood that behind prognostications about the pound’s exchange rate and behind the debates of financial experts, only one question, at once simple and fundamental, was being asked: Do we want an undemocratic authority ruling our lives, or would we rather regain control over our destiny? Brexit is, above all, a political issue. It’s about the free choice of a people deciding to govern itself. Even when it is touted by all the propaganda in the world, a cage remains a cage, and a cage is unbearable to a human being in love with freedom.

The European Union has become a prison of peoples. Each of the 28 countries that constitute it has slowly lost its democratic prerogatives to commissions and councils with no popular mandate. Every nation in the union has had to apply laws it did not want for itself. Member nations no longer determine their own budgets. They are called upon to open their borders against their will.

Countries in the eurozone face an even less enviable situation. In the name of ideology, different economies are forced to adopt the same currency, even if doing so bleeds them dry. It’s a modern version of the Procrustean bed, and the people no longer have a say.

And what about the European Parliament? It’s democratic in appearance only, because it’s based on a lie: the pretense that there is a homogeneous European people, and that a Polish member of the European Parliament has the legitimacy to make law for the Spanish. We have tried to deny the existence of sovereign nations. It’s only natural that they would not allow being denied.

Your Thoughts on BrexitWhat fears or hopes do you have about your own country, whether you are in Europe or elsewhere, after Britain’s decision to exit? Share your thoughts.

Brexit wasn’t the European people’s first cry of revolt. In 2005, France and the Netherlands held referendums about the proposed European Union constitution. In both countries, opposition was massive, and other governments decided on the spot to halt the experiment for fear the contagion might spread. A few years later, the European Union constitution was forced on the people of Europe anyway, under the guise of the Lisbon Treaty. In 2008, Ireland, also by way of referendum, refused to apply that treaty. And once again, a popular decision was brushed aside.

When in 2015 Greece decided by referendum to reject Brussels’ austerity plans, the European Union’s antidemocratic response took no one by surprise: To deny the people’s will had become a habit. In a flash of honesty, the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, unabashedly declared, “There can be no democratic choice against the European treaties.”

Brexit may not have been the first cry of hope, but it may be the people’s first real victory. The British have presented the union with a dilemma it will have a hard time getting out of. Either it allows Britain to sail away quietly and thus runs the risk of setting a precedent: The political and economic success of a country that left the European Union would be clear evidence of the union’s noxiousness. Or, like a sore loser, the union makes the British pay for their departure by every means possible and thus exposes the tyrannical nature of its power. Common sense points toward the former option. I have a feeling Brussels will choose the latter.Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter

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One thing is certain: Britain’s departure from the European Union will not make the union more democratic. The hierarchical structure of its supranational institutions will want to reinforce itself: Like all dying ideologies, the union knows only how to forge blindly ahead. The roles are already cast — Germany will lead the way, and France will obligingly tag along.

Here is a sign: President François Hollande of France, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy and acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain take their lead directly from Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, without running through Brussels. A quip attributed to Henry Kissinger, “Who do I call if I want to call Europe?” now has a clear answer: Call Berlin.

So the people of Europe have but one alternative left: to remain bound hand-and-foot to a union that betrays national interests and popular sovereignty and that throws our countries wide open to massive immigration and arrogant finance, or to reclaim their freedom by voting.

Calls for referendums are ringing throughout the Continent. I myself have suggested to Mr. Hollande that one such public consultation be held in France. He did not fail to turn me down. More and more, the destiny of the European Union resembles the destiny of the Soviet Union, which died from its own contradictions.

The People’s Spring is now inevitable! The only question left to ask is whether Europe is ready to rid itself of its illusions, or if the return to reason will come with suffering. I made my decision a long time ago: I chose France. I chose sovereign nations. I chose freedom.

Marine Le Pen is president of the National Front party in France. This essay was translated by John Cullen from the French.

Typical liberal progressives. They will not accept defeat. They regroup have powows to figure out what different phoney labels to use, repackage the same dogma, make the same thing sound like it is different and then continue to shove it down our throats:

It would be all too tempting for the incoming Trump administration to dismiss last weekend's Italian referendum as an inconsequential vote on a distant shore that will have little bearing on the U.S. economy.

Sadly, that would be a big mistake.

Unlike Greece, Italy has a large economy that is of considerable systemic economic importance. It also has the most compromised of economic fundamentals, which makes it singularly ill-prepared to weather a prolonged period of political instability. As such, it has the potential to both roil global financial markets and to derail the global economic recovery.

The incoming Trump administration would be ignoring Italian political and economic developments at its peril, particularly in light of the Italian government's resounding defeat in last weekend's referendum.

After all, Italy is the eurozone's third-largest member country, with a banking system that has around $4 trillion in assets. It also happens to be the world's third-largest government bond market, with bonds in excess of $2.5 trillion.

These factors make Italy's economic well-being essential for the euro's longer-run survival. Yet, they also make Italy too big for Europe to save in the event that it were to experience a full-blown economic and financial crisis.

In the run-up to last weekend's Italian referendum, money flew out of Italy at an alarming rate as Italians fretted about the stability of an Italian banking system, with nonperforming loans totaling as much as 18 percent of its balance sheet. Indeed, European Central Bank data on Italy's TARGET2 balances - the eurozone's payment system - through September 2016 suggest that capital flight from the country has been on a scale of that experienced at the height of the eurozone debt crisis in the first part of 2012.

In the months immediately ahead, there is every prospect that capital flight out of Italy will gather pace. It will do so as Italian bank depositors fear a prolonged period of political instability that will highly circumscribe the government's ability to address the country's banking sector challenges.

In the immediate aftermath of last weekend's referendum, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has followed through on his pledge to resign if he lost that referendum. While Renzi's resignation is unlikely to prompt early Italian elections, it is likely to mean that Italy will have a government that will have little authority to govern, given the overwhelming margin by which it lost the referendum.

It is also likely to put wind in the sails of the radical Five Star Movement party that is committed to taking the country out of the euro.

A weak government saddled with an unreformed Senate that can continue to block legislation is the last thing a country needs when its economy is as sclerotic as that of Italy, when its government is over-indebted, when its banks are saddled with a mountain of nonperforming loans and when the country has become internationally uncompetitive.

Without a strong government, there is little prospect for the type of economic reforms that might kick-start the Italian economy and allow it to grow out of its public debt and banking sector problems.

There are also few prospects that the country will extricate itself from its downward economic and political spiral. Should the Italian economy lurch toward an economic and financial crisis over the next few months, it would be doing so at an inopportune time for its major economic partners.

France is scheduled to go to the polls in April and May, while Germany is expected to hold its parliamentary elections in September. With Marine Le Pen of the French National Front rising in the polls and with German Chancellor Angela Merkel's political star waning, these elections will make it very difficult for both the French and the German governments to offer support to Italy on the scale that they have done in previous Italian economic crises.

All of this suggests that President-elect Donald Trump could be tested by a European economic baptism of fire in the early months of his administration as the Italian economic crisis comes to a head.

Hopefully, Trump will have the flexibility to adapt his proposed U.S. economic program to the new realities of the global economy. One also has to hope that he will tone down his confrontational rhetoric on international economic issues and provide the sort of global economic leadership that might limit the fallout from an Italian economic and financial market meltdown.

If he does not do so, we should brace ourselves for some very rough sledding both in the U.S. and the global economies in the years immediately ahead.